Aunt Linda is the identical twin to my mother and I was very close to her. I always told everyone that I grew up with two moms. I had a “good cop” mom and a “bad cop” mom. Aunt Linda was always my “good cop” mom. She got me out of a lot stuff that my mom doesn’t know about to this day. We both love country music and Loretta Lynn is our favorite. We were planning to one day go to where Loretta Lynn grew up in Butcher Holler. The movie, “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, is about Loretta Lynn’s life and we had seen that movie together so many times we could recite it word for word.

When I was in eighth grade I got a “smoke up.” A smoke up was something you got when your grade in a class dropped a full grade. The teacher would send a paper home to your parents and they would have to sign it and send it back to school. Well, my one and only smoke up was in my science class. I knew if my mom seen it I would be grounded and not able to hang out with friends. I remember going to Aunt Linda and of course, she signed it. It was our “little secret” and my mom didn’t have to know about it. Guess what? My mom found out about it and I got my butt whipped with the belt. That was the only time I remember my aunt and my mom getting into it. My aunt was so upset that my mom “beat” me with the belt. After a couple of days things were back to normal. As I got older, it was story we would laugh about and of course, my aunt would yell at my mom again for whipping me with belt.